I was in the mood for some more Kirby after finishing Kirby 64, and then I remembered Kirby's Adventure on my NES Classic! It's one of the very few mainline Kirby games I haven't yet beaten (and I think may actually be the last I hadn't beaten), so I thought why not give it a try. I remembered it controlling not so hot the last time I tried it, but I figured that must've just been the mood I was in at the time. I proved to myself it was in fact not the mood I was in at the time, and I didn't really enjoy my time with this game when all was said and done. I'm glad to have the entire mainline Kirby series under my belt now, I suppose, but the 3 hours of this game aren't really ones I'll look back on super fondly compared to the many many hours I spent with the GBA version of this game as a kid.

It's Kirby in his first adventure where he could gain powers and not just suck things up and spit them out. It's a pretty groundbreaking entry for the series, considering the copy ability is one of the things Kirby is best known for these days. There are a good handful of powers, at least on paper, as many of them have very similar or nearly identical effects but different cosmetics. You go through 7 worlds with 7 bosses to eventually fight Nightmare in a special final two-stage boss fight.

The level design is alright, even if some levels end up feeling a little short in retrospect. You get to them via a series of hub areas for each world that has both doors to the stages but also doors to mini-games you can play for extra lives, mini-boss arenas you can do for a maxim tomato, or a gallery area where you can get a certain power for free whenever you want. Many of the levels have secret switches hidden in them that will unlock more of these special bonus areas in the hub maps, but some of these switches are SUPER hard to find and are behind nearly or entirely invisible doors. 100%-ing this game without a guide is no easy feat, and I definitely couldn't've done it in 3 hours if I hadn't remembered basically all of them, at least in part, from all my time with this as a kid.

My biggest issues with the game are largely mechanical. First off, while the game is very pretty for a NES game, it also means there's a LOT of slowdown, particularly when there are a lot of enemies on screen at once. Next, Kirby has a lot more heft to him than he does in later games, and even compared to Kirby's Dream Land 1 and 2 (the games before and after this one), it feels like it takes him way longer to recover from hits, falls, etc. before he can jump or use a power again. On top of that, while you press B to use your powers and A to jump, A very critically does not fly. Pressing Up on the D-pad flies, and while this is certainly partly my fault for having the muscle memory that later Kirby games have given me, there were a ton of times where I wanted to fly but couldn't, or accidentally started flying when I didn't want to because of a stray command on the D-pad. Lastly, it's always just one hit (instead of how it's almost always several in later games) before you lose your power. The end experience wasn't often very challenging, but it was very often frustrating due to some combination of the above issues.

The presentation is nice, as you'd hope a NES game from 1993 would be. Although it does add to the aforementioned slow down, the environments have lots of colors, enemies and Kirby have a lot of animations. The color pallet swaps from stage to stage do a good job of coming off more as stylistic choices instead of hardware necessities. The enemy designs would go on to be reused to countless Kirby games for a good reason: They're really solid and memorable ones, especially the bosses (even though a lot of these guys are lifted from Kirby's Dream Land themselves). The same thing goes for the music, which is as iconic as anything else in this game when it comes to Kirby.

Verdict: Not Recommended. I did not enjoy enough of my time with this game that I can't recommend it without tons of caveats. The experience of Kirby has been improved and tightened up so significantly since this, his second outing, that the barrier to entry is already weirdly high for a Kirby game (having to relearn how to Kirby) even if the slowdown issues weren't a problem on top of that. It's an important stepping stone for a series I love, but this is definitely my least favorite among all the mainline Kirby games.

Kirby's Adventure was a monumental follow-up to what was at best a retail tech demo on the Gameboy with Kirby's Dreamland. Emerging on the NES in its twilight years well into the beginning of the SNES's life cycle, Kirby's Adventure was a game pushing the limits of the console it was on. It really was a grandiose adventure through a wide variety of locales with fantastic music (BUTTER BUILDING) and actual cutting-edge graphics for the NES.

And let's not even get started on the fact that this was the game that introduced one of the most iconic abilities in video games, Kirby eating dudes and obtaining their powers through osmosis. If you wanted Kirby to breath fire, ice, shoot lasers, throw cutter, or turn into a fucking wheel, this game has you covered. The imagination at work was nearly endless, only further innovated on in later games in the series by making Kirby wear funny hats. It really was a game you could play however you want.

Whereas Kirby's Dreamland established Kirby as a cute quirky mascot for Nintendo, Kirby's Adventure was the game that solidified his place in the video game pantheon of great franchises. Even if it's a bit on the easy side and not a particular long game, it's fantastic to see where Kirby came from, and the game's platforming and weird boss fights still hold up 3 decades later. What a master class.

TLDR Play the 3D Classics Version on 3DS Instead or Nightmare in Dreamland

It’s a pretty sound Kirby game! The first of it’s kind to have Copy Abilities too and man am I glad Sakurai decided to combine a lot of abilities into one come Super Star. Hopefully certain abilities don’t stay split for too long :)

It’s a solid time overall, but the feel of Kirby hasn’t been refined yet, so he’s simultaneously the most stiff and floaty he’s ever been (and will have been) and given how Copy Abilities drop after one hit, you REALLY feel that. With that said, Beam is the best ability in the game. Its damage output is pitiful against bosses, but the range it gives you cannot be topped, especially when it comes to hordes of enemies.

The game is a technical marvel given the hardware, but this game LAGS badly at points and sprite flickering is abundant. As mentioned in the title, if you plan on playing the game, try and play the 3D Classics release of the game where it’s more stable and makes the game so much prettier than it already was (genuinely, this game looks amazing. Butter Building and Rainbow Resort being personal high lights). The GBA version is also pretty good. Though a little less impressive than both OG versions, it’s given some modern-ish touch ups to game feel that make it semi-consistent with what we have now. That and the Nightmare is more intimidating in the GBA version.

Still, a genuinely good time nonetheless. Though, to be honest, I don’t think Kirby will control as smoothly as he is now until Super Star Ultra, so that will most likely be a constant complaint moving forward with this series until then… or will it?

A entrada do ritmo frenético na franquia

Gostei muito do Adventure e após ter jogado o Dream land da pra perceber perfeitamente o salto que teve em gameplay depois do primeiro jogo. O nosso amiguinho rosa ficou muito mais frenético e adquiriu a sua habilidade mais conhecida de roubar poderes, mas claro.. não foi só ele que ficou frenético, seus inimigos também ficaram e com isso o jogo ficou um pouco mais desafiador nessa versão do NES.

O único contato que tive até então com o Adventure foi no remake dele la do GBA e eu gostei muito desse jogo, só que claro que nesse remake a dificuldade dele foi um pouco mais abaixada no meu ponto de vista e ÓBVIO que o desempenho do console contribuiu pra isso, já que a dificuldade do Adventure original do NES é bem maior por conta da lentidão do console que infelizmente causa imprecisão nos comandos.

Mas fora isso, jogão envelheceu bem nos gráficos e nas musiquinhas, gostei muito mais desse do que o primeirão principalmente por esse ser mais porrada atrás da outra, mas assim, se você quiser jogar o Adventure ultimamente eu recomendo que você vá pelo remake do GBA e não pelo original, já que la o jogo ta bem melhor pra jogar e a sua experiência vai ser bem mais redondinha, igual o Kirby.

Esse jogo é uma preciosidade. Transpira carisma e personalidade logo nos primeiros segundos, desde o momento de ligar o cartucho.

Apesar de não ser o primeiro jogo da serie, e sim o segundo, é aqui que a gente é apresentado a alguns dos principais elementos que são a marca registrada do Kirby, como a habilidade de copiar poderes dos inimigos. Embora com um leque pequeno de poderes, é notável como eles funcionam muito bem dentro do jogo e do game design proposto, gerando uma diversidade de jogabilidade muito bem vinda.

Também é tranquilamente um dos jogos mais belos e tecnicamente impressionantes do NES. Era incrível o que os caras conseguiam extrair desse hardware nos anos finais dele.

kirby's dream land already had a strong aesthetic, but adventure is just on a whole other level. the game's wide variety of colour palettes are all striking; vivid sunsets, dreamlike castles in the clouds, highly stylised pastel spacescapes, they're not only impressive on a technical level befitting a game at the end of the NES' life cycle, but they also evoke a surprising amount of ambience, giving its myriad locales a lot of character

the game generally has a remarkable sense of place, i really like how the world map is not so much a menu like in a lot of its contemporaries but more of a mini-stage that uses the same mechanical language as the rest of the game, the backdrops of the level entrances have a sort of theatre set look to them that serves as an abstraction of what that level will feature, and where it exists in relation to the other levels which is an incredibly cool idea, i particularly like how butter building's hub world is entirely vertical, giving the impression of climbing one big tower that i don't think would quite come across otherwise

all this is to say nothing of the levels themselves, which are so eager to wow you with their amount of visual themes its astonishing, the first level of grape garden for instance starts in a sort of cloudy castle area, then goes to a purple-y starry sky, and then an icy aurora borealis area, all in like under two minutes. dream land 1 was great at this too but i find it even more impressive here considering how adventure goes even harder on the detail and variety, in a much longer game to boot

the level design is very simple, more focused on enemies and stage hazards than platforming and not very challenging, but it's just very comfy as a result and as i said before never sticking with one thing too long, the stages are all very short too and while a much fuller feeling game than its predessor, the game can be comfortably beaten in one sitting, it's a game that burns bright and fast and doesn't let its simple gameplay wear thin, and if you have any passing knowledge about this series at all then you probably don't even need me to tell you what a welcome addition copy abilities are in complimenting all of this

if i were to gripe about something it would probably be that the extra mode is a little disappointing compared to dream land's which increased the difficulty by changing enemy placements and behaviours to be far more dangerous, and also introducing new enemy types altogether which made the game feel very fresh and really enhanced the game for me. adventure merely lowers your max health and doesn't allow you to save, which is far less interesting and the latter of which was a non-factor considering that i was playing the game on my 3DS that i could just put into sleep mode

otherwise though kirby's adventure is a delight, beautiful art and animation, amazing music, fun and cozy gameplay, all jam-packed into a lovely little two-hour adventure. so fluff up your pillow, for tonight dream land will sleep well~